The overall goals of the Core Center remain as before to: bring together 17 investigators working on different aspects of hearing and communication disorders, increase the efficiency and productivity of their individual efforts and ongoing collaborations, integrate investigators studying basic hearing mechanisms in animals with investigators studying human hearing impairment. This provides new and sometimes unique opportunities for creative and developing collaborations to reach fruition. The investigators participating in this application represent a broad range of hearing science from anatomy and physiology of hearing in insects to the psychoacoustics of complex sound perception in hearing impaired humans. Existing projects include sound localization in bats and birds, prey-predator interactions in insects and bats, hair cell regeneration in fish and birds, recovery of hearing and vocalizations in birds following hair cell regeneration, MIG imaging of language processes in humans, precision of time resolution in bats, birds, normal, hearing impaired, and aged humans, and the ontogeny of complex acoustic perception in insects, fish, birds, and humans. Taken together, this group of investigators and topics in hearing science is probably the most diverse in existence. The support of the P30 mechanism is essential in keeping a high level of interactive integrity and productivity.